Creolizing Jung: Re-imagined alchemy and individuation in Anton Nimblett’s Sections of an Orange and Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming’s Curry Flavour

Abstract

Whereas psychoanalytic trauma theory has received much critical attention in recent postcolonial studies, this article attempts to shift attention to depth psychology. It blends an exploration of key Jungian concepts, such as alchemy and individuation, with analyses of a short story from Anton Nimblett’s collection Sections of an Orange and a selection of poems from Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming’s Curry Flavour, and an eco-critical Marxist critique. Scrutinizing the complex relationship between an alienated outer world and the characters’ internal psychological space, it proposes that a post-Jungian optic can make a meaningful contribution to the elucidation of the interface of colonial-capitalist exploitation, and to resistance to capitalist domination through the creative unconscious.

Keywords:

• Post-Jungian theory
• Anton Nimblett
• Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming
• food
• depth psychology
• Trinidad

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Christi Taylor Jones, Michael Gellert, Gordon Nelson, Matthew Becker and Rod Hernandez, as well as the peer reviewers and editors at JPW, for instigating and supporting her alchemical writing process.

Funding

This work was supported by conference travel grants awarded by California State Universities Dominguez Hills and Northridge, as well as Santa Monica College.

Notes

1. Hickling (2007) questions the Freudian concept of the “unconscious” (180) and instead relies on the “ ‘nonconscious’, which is simply an aggregation of neuronal and electro-chemical activity that does not impinge on consciousness” (183).

2. On the transnational background of alchemy, see White (1996).

3. At the conference “Narrating the Caribbean Nation”, hosted by Peepal Tree Press at Leeds Metropolitan University, 14–15 April 2012, Kwame Dawes made me aware of the need to look for similarities between Jungian depth psychology and African philosophy and traditions.

4. On similarities between Freud’s and Jung’s concepts of Eros, see Samuels (1989, 188).

5. Compare Mehta (2004, 224–225).

6. On the complex rules often governing Indian and Indo-Caribbean cooking rituals, see Mehta (2004, 112–116) and Khare (1976).

7. See also Rabi’a (2003, 9, 11).